Saturday

I'd just hung up the phone from talking to my son about the birth of his first grandchild, and my mind wandered to how my own mother had told me she got me out of the cabbage patch. I recalled what a sweet idea it was as long as I believed it, which I did until my honeymoon night at the motel where I learned the awful animal truth about lust of the flesh and the carnal mind of mankind.

And then I sat in the chair nodding off while a garden show about how to put up a rabbit fence played on HGTV, which caused me to think how I wished they’d bring back some of the old shows, like “Queen for a Day” wherein the contestant with the worst hard luck story would get a new wringer washer or Philco refrigerator and walk across the stage with a stole on her shoulders and a crown on her head, and how I always wished I could be on the show and get voted the most hard up and get to be queen bee for a day.

And then I turned off the TV and picked up the Bible which I have made it my habit to read through, a chapter or two at a time, all the way to the end, then start over again, for my truest pleasure is to gird my loins with Biblical knowledge, the better to sit in the pew of a Sunday and catch the preacher in his goofs.

And I always read the King James version because, though it uses words like thou for you and wert for were and wast for was and spake for spoke, and though it contains an excess of nonsense of every kind, I love the way the words roll like ocean waves and sound like William Shakespeare was in on the writing of it. And since I had the night before turned the last page of the Book of Revelations, I started up again with the book of Genesis. And I read how in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth and the Earth was without form and void and all that. Then I read how the Lord God did plant a tree "eastward in Eden" and told Adam and Eve if they ate of the fruit of it, they'd have Hell to pay, and how a serpent came and talked Eve into eating of it, and after Adam did too, they knew they were naked and hid from God. Then God was walking in the garden and called out to them and they lied and God asked why and they said because they were naked and ashamed and he asked "Who told thee thou wert naked?" and they blamed it on the serpent....You know that old story, or ought to.

What a buncha shit.

And it came to pass that as I read, my eyes fell shut, and forthwith I drifted off into a place that was without form and void, and I recalled the beginning of time in the Garden of Eatin’ when the earth was new, and lo, I was there. I lay cradled, just a little baby, naked as a pinto bean, all chubby and pink as a little piglet, in a big green cabbage leaf glistening with dewdrops.

And I was happy just snuggling there, goo-gooing, with not a care in the world nor a wicked thought.

I was giggling and thrashing my little fists in the air, when up slithered Sneaky Snake, intent on disturbing my perfect innocence and bliss--and, as the story goes, the innocence and bliss of all mankind.

And the serpent opened his mouth and said unto me, talking like King James: “Dost thou know thou art naked?”

And I lifted my head and looked down and realized that he spake the truth, and I let out a little squeal and covered up my little privates with my little hands.

And that was the beginning of my being so private about my privates.

And Sneaky Snake slithered off, pleased with himself, and grinning.

Then a while later I saw the Lord, disguised as a jack rabbit in overalls, walking upright out of the cornfield. He plucked up a carrot and, chewing it like a cigar, he took to running on tiptoes through the cabbage patch toward me calling out “Trixie? Oh, Trixie? Wherefore art thou, Trixie?”

And I was sore afraid. I reached up and pulled one side of the cabbage leaf over me as if I were a little wad of hamburger meat tucked into a cabbage roll, and along came the rabbit, nose twitching, and he said, “Why wert thou hiding from me?”

And I said, “Because I was naked and ashamed.”

“Who toldst thee thou wert naked?!!!”

So I thought real fast and I said unto him: “The snake is who told me! And Lord, when he told me I wast naked, I said unto him: ‘Get thee behind me Satan!’ I’ve got your number! And the area code is 666!"

And that was the beginning of my telling a big one whenever I thought it would save my butt.

And the Lord was pleased with me and said, “Well done, good and faithful servant. I shall reward thee with the crown of life.”

And forthwith the Lord placed on my head a little crown of gold he plucked from a queen bee in a nearby hive, and I lay there a while feeling mighty proud of what I’d done, giggling and drooling, kicking my happy little feet into the air.

And when I awoke this morning, I felt so light with delight, it took me a while to figure out I was not that sweet little morsel in the dewy cabbage leaf but a shriveled up, cantankerous old crow in a La-Z-boy recliner.

But I got my bones together and arose out of that chair and came in here to write it all down while my memory remained fresh, in hopes that some of y’all who read it will be wise enough to get the point, just in case there is one.

The End.

Take a look at my Precious Memories album, which I've just got started:

Wednesday

"I study the great apes. It's wrong to see ourselves as creatures of culture and forget our biological origins. All sorts of human behaviour is unintelligible unless one considers primate behaviour. We are intelligent apes, with the capacity to be angelic as well as demonic." ---Neurologist Oliver Sacks.

Thursday

"As we sit and try not to think about Pope Benedict’s balls, we can muse on how potential revelations may indeed develop from these investigations."

"There is very little known about the reign of Pope Benedict III except that clerics were generally satisfied with his testicles. Upon his coronation in 855 AD God’s chosen messenger on Earth sat in a special chair resembling an ancient commode while the Holy See checked to make sure that the papacy was indeed infallible."

“All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens,” John Hagee, a Texas-based evangelical pastor who leads the Christian Zionist movement in the United States, said after Katrina. “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are – were recipients of the judgment of God for that."

IT'S GEOLOGY, PEOPLE!!!

I'LL BEAT HIS AYSE!!!! I CAN'T STAND THAT SOB!!!

It's not ALL right-wing fundamentalist types, though. DON'T BLAME THEM FOR EVERYTHING!:

"During and after World War II, some Orthodox Jews attributed the murder of 6 million fellow believers to Jewish transgression. Many in that camp pointed a finger at Zionists, who they accused of trying to establish Israel too soon, before the Messiah’s return.

“There were groups that claimed this was divine punishment because there were no other theological options,” says Bernard M. Levinson, a Jewish studies professor at the University of Minnesota. “Their own piety made things difficult.”

More recently, one of Israel’s leading rabbis generated controversy for claiming that last year's devastating fire in the Jewish state - the worst in the country’s history – was divine retribution for Jews failing to observe the Sabbath."

All the above is from the article you can link to from the title. It's a real good article and short, too.